DIY Fashion Remix Kick Off and Upcyled Look #1 w/ Tutorial

Happy Monday! So I am super excited to kick off the DIY Fashion Remix! For the whole month of July I will be cutting, sewing, remixing old looks into new ones. This is not a new thing by any means of the imagination! People have been doing this for centuries. But it is something that i’ve wanted to fiddle more with for sometime now. and woohoo! the time has arrived! Praise God! Hallelujah! lol!

Just to give you a little preview of what to expect over the next couple of weeks…

Each post this month will feature upcyled pieces that i’ve created from either thrifted items or something that I have in my existing wardrobe. Its also my goal to share a tutorial of each of my makes. There are a few ways to approach upcycling and some require little to no sewing skills what so ever. My makes will require some basic sewing knowledge. My goal is to demonstrate various ways to upcylce garments while showing how basic sewing skills can affordably extend your existing wardrobe.

Each tutorial will feature the sewing skill level, materials needed and step by step photos of how I created my re-makes.

So on to my first look…

Garment Inspiration/Description: I absolutely love the 2 piece set that I created from this very oversized dress. I found it at Value Village and I think I paid like $4.00 for it. The tags were still on it and at first I was like yuck! Frumpy and outdated. I heard Madea in the back of my head saying: “Hellrrrr! I wants my dress back.” lol!Lol!.

It also reminded me of what plus size clothing was circa the pre- curvy girl revolution in plus size clothing. Thank God for size equality in the fashion industry. This garments saving grace was the pretty embroidered sweet heart neckline along with those very cute floral buttons and the inseam pockets. It had a very vintage quality to it that caused me to think of the women’s playsuits of the 40s and 50’s.

I already knew that there was enough fabric to size down the garment into what I wanted. So I decided to make a crop top and gathered skirt set. I styled the look with bright pink pumps, gold hoops and I styled my roller set hair in a high pin curled bun and tied a brightly colored striped scarf around my head. I wanted to continue to play on the vintage inspiration with the final look. Below are my styled shots. For the tutorial continue to scroll down past the photos.

And thats it. I have to give my sister in law Tane Acevedo a special thank you for using her photography skills to take these shots for me!

I examined the dress and began deconstruct it, removing the things that I know I didn’t need. For this project I removed the shoulder pads, cut the sleeves and the waist tie that buttoned at the front and tied to the back. I also unpicked the dress zipper from the skirt portion of the dress all the way up to about the mid back portion of the top. I knew I could shorten the zipper and repurpose it to be used to close either the top or the skirt. Since I had to gather the skirt and make a waistband I thought it would be easier use it for the top.

2. I cut the skirt away from the top just below the seam line.

3. Next I shortened the hem of the skirt by about 7inches (but you can shorten to your desired length). By simply using tailors chalk to mark the hem line directly on the skirt the length I wanted to remove and using my scissors to cut.

4. From the fabric that I removed from the hem I was able to make my waistband. I measured my waist which is 36″. I added 1″ for ease and another 1/2″ for seam allowance which was a total of 37.5″ (note: because the skirt hem was already attached at the side seams I used one side seam to count as the fold of the fabric which meant that I only needed to add enough seam allowance for 1 seam which opened at the back of the skirt). I then devided this number by 2 which was 18.75″. This was for the length. For the width, I wanted a 1.5″ wide waistband so I took 1.5″ and added 1/2″ to the top and bottom for a total of 2.5″ and I multiplied it by 2 for the facing for a total of 5″.

Once I figured out my measurements I used tailors chalk and a clear ruler to draw the waistband directly onto the fabric. and cut my new waistband.

4. I cut fusible interfacing 1.”x 37″ and fused it to the facing side of the waistband ( I don’t put interfacing in the seam allowance. I find it makes my seams extra bulky and constricts the ease of my waistband)

5. I Put the waistband aside and took the skirt to the sewing machine and with a long running stitch (I put mine at 5 which is the longest stitch that my machine will make) I sewed along the waist end of the skirt leaving long thread tails at each end. I then pulled on the thread tails and I evenly gathered the fabric until it reached the same size as the waistband.

6. I then pinned the skirt to the waistband and sewed the waistband to the skirt. Once the skirt was attached, I folded the facing portion of the waistband over, pinned it down to the waistband and pressed it flat. (note: I serged raw edge of the facing side of the waistband. If you don’t have a serger then you can just fold up the raw edge by about 1/2″. This will give you a clean edge when you hand finish the facing to the waistband). Below is what it looked like once I finished.

7. I serged the hem of the skirt first and then I thread marked the hem 1″ by running the skirt hem through my sewing machine along the 1″ mark. This helped me to keep the hem even. I then folded it up along the thread the basting as I ran the iron over the folded fabric (this helps to keep the fabric in place when you top stitch the final hem). I finished the hem by topstitching at 3/4″ from the bottom hemline.

8. I finished the skirt by inserting a metal zipper at the back waistline (you could use any zipper application for this style of skirt but a metal jean zipper is what I had on hand and matched the metal zipper that was originally on the dress and what I used for the top). I then hand finished the waistband using a slip stitch.

Top

9. The first thing that I did for the top was to cut the sleeves. The original sleeve seam was finished with a flat felled seam which was great! This allowed me to carefully cut the sleeve off and still leave the seam finish in tack. This made it so that I didn’t have to finish the sleeve hem and It now looks like a drop shoulder sleeve.

10. I then draped the top on my maniquinn and pinned the shoulders in place as well as lined the princess seams on my top with the princess seam line on my manequinn (pinning it this way ensures that the garment remains on grain when you begin to reduce the size of the top at the side seam).

11. I then pinned out the excess fabric at each side seam and cut off the excess fabric. Making sure to leave enough excess fabric to sew the new side seams.

12. Next I sewed the side seams.

13. I shortened the zipper by carefully sewing across the bottom of the zipper back and forth several times before cutting off the excess zipper.

14. I ended up removing 2 of the buttons from the bottom of the top in order to make room for hemming.

15. Hemming the top using the self fabric was a little wonky for some reason so I ended up having to use bias tape in order to get an even and flat hem. Once I attached bias tape to the hem of the top, I pressed out the seam and folded under the bias tape so that it was completely on the inside of the top and pressed it flat. I then top stitched at 1/2″ from the bottom hem. Below is a picture of the finished bias tape hem from the inside of the top and the zipper from the outside.

At thats it! From frumpy to modestly chic! I have a new outfit that I can’t wait to wear to a summer brunch or a day party with some of my lady friends!!!

Well I hope that you enjoyed today’s post! I can’t wait to share my next fashion remix look! Until next time!

I so love the idea of blogging about refashioned and upcycled pieces…so much fun to watch! That’s really cute what you did with the dress. Loved how you styled it too!
I will be tuning in the rest of the month for more, so don’t stop posting on SMT. Thanks!